Last Argument Of Kings: Book Three (The First Law 3)

There was the sneering cripple who’d asked all the questions that day in the tower, dressed now all in white. There was a fat man with a face full of broken veins, looked as if he started each day with a bottle. There was a tall, lean bastard in a black breastplate covered in fancy gold, with a soft smile and hard little eyes. As shifty a pack of liars as Logen had ever laid eyes on, but there was one worse than all the rest together.

Bayaz sat with an easy grin on his face, as if everything had turned out just the way he’d planned. Maybe it had. Damn wizard. Logen should have known better than to trust a man with no hair. The spirits had warned him that Magi have their own purposes, but he’d taken no notice, plunged on blindly, hoping for the best, just like always. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he never listens. One fault among many.

His eyes swivelled the other way, towards Jezal. He looked comfortable enough in his kingly robes, golden crown gleaming on his head, golden chair even bigger than the one that Logen was sitting in. His wife sat beside him. She had a frosty pride about her, maybe, but no worse for that. Beautiful as a winter morning. And she had this look on her face, when she looked at Jezal. A fierce kind of look, as if she could hardly stop herself tearing into him with her teeth. That lucky bastard always seemed to come out alright. She could’ve had a little bite out of Logen if she’d wanted, but what woman in her right mind did?

He frowned most of all at himself in the mirrors opposite, raised up on the high platform beside Jezal and his queen. He looked a sullen and brooding, scarred and fearsome monster beside that beautiful pair. A man made of murder, then swaddled in rich coloured cloth and rare white furs, set with polished rivets and bright buckles, all topped off with a great golden chain around his shoulders. That same chain that Bethod had worn. His hands stuck from the ends of his fur-trimmed sleeves, marked and brutal, one finger missing, grasping at the arms of his gilded chair. King’s clothes, maybe, but killer’s hands. He looked like the villain in some old children’s story. The ruthless warrior, clawed his way to power with fire and steel. Climbed to a throne up a mountain of corpses. Maybe he was that man.

He squirmed around, new cloth scratching at his clammy skin. He’d come a long way, since he dragged himself out of a river without even a pair of boots to his name. Dragged himself across the High Places with nothing but a pot for company. He’d come a long way, but he wasn’t sure he hadn’t liked himself better before. He’d laughed when he’d heard that Bethod was calling himself a king. Now here he was, doing the same, and even worse suited to the job. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s a cunt. Simple as that. And that’s not something any man likes to admit about himself.

The drunkard, Hoff, was doing most of the talking. ‘The Lords’ Round lies in ruins, alas. For the time being, therefore, until a venue of grandeur suitable for this noble institution has been built – a new Lords’ Round, richer and greater than the last – it has been decided that the Open Council will stand in recess.’

There was a pause. ‘In recess?’ someone muttered.

‘How will we be heard?’

‘Where will the nobles have their voice?’

‘The nobles will speak through the Closed Council.’ Hoff had that tone a man uses talking down to a child. ‘Or may apply to the Under-Secretary for Audiences to obtain a hearing with the king.’

‘But any peasant may do so!’

Hoff raised his eyebrows. ‘True.’

A ripple of anger spread out through the Lords in front of them. Logen might not have understood too much about politics, but he could recognise one set of men getting stood on by another. Never a nice thing to be part of, but at least he was on the side doing the standing, for once.

‘The king and the nation are one and the same!’ Bayaz’ harsh voice cut over the chatter. ‘You only borrow your lands from him. He regrets that he requires some portion of them back, but such is the spur of necessity.’

‘A quarter.’ The cripple licked at his empty gums with a faint sucking sound. ‘From each one of you.’

‘This will not stand!’ shouted an angry old man in the front row.

‘You think not, Lord Isher?’ Bayaz only smiled at him. ‘Those who do not think so may join Lord Brock in dusty exile, and surrender all their lands to the crown instead of just a portion.’

‘This is an outrage!’ shouted another man. ‘Always, the king has been first among equals, the greatest of nobles, not above them. Our votes brought him to the throne, and we refuse—’

‘You dance close to a line, Lord Heugen.’ The cripple’s face twitched with ugly spasms as he frowned across the room. ‘You might wish to remain on that side of it, where it is safe, and warm, and loyal. The other side will not suit you so well, I think.’ A long tear ran from his flickering left eye and down his hollow cheek. ‘The Surveyor General will be assessing your estates over the coming months. It would be wise for you all to lend him your fullest assistance.’

A lot of men were on their feet now, scowling, shaking fists. ‘This is outrageous!’

‘Unprecedented!’

‘Unacceptable!’

‘We refuse to be intimidated!’

Jezal sprang from his throne, raising his jewelled sword high, and struck at the platform again and again with the end of the scabbard, filling the room with booming echoes. ‘I am the king!’ he bellowed at the suddenly silent chamber. ‘I am not offering a choice, I am issuing a royal decree! Adua will be rebuilt, and more glorious than ever! This is the price! You have grown too used to a weak crown, my Lords! Believe me when I say that those days are now behind us!’

Bayaz leaned sideways to mutter in Logen’s ear. ‘Surprisingly good at this, isn’t he?’

The Lords grumbled, but they sat back down as Jezal spoke on, voice washing around the room with easy confidence, sheathed sword still held firmly in one fist. ‘Those who lent me their wholehearted support in the recent crisis will be exempt. But that list, to your shame, is all too brief. Why, it was friends from outside the borders of the Union who sustained us in our time of need!’

The man in black swept from his chair. ‘I, Orso of Talins, stand always at the side of my royal son and daughter!’ He seized Jezal’s face and kissed both his cheeks. Then he did the same with the queen. ‘Their friends are my friends.’ He said it with a smile, but the meaning was hard to miss. ‘Their enemies? Ah! You all are clever men. You can guess the rest.’

‘I thank you for your part in our deliverance,’ said Jezal. ‘You have our gratitude. The war between the Union and the North is at an end. The tyrant Bethod is dead, and there is a new order. I am proud to call the man who threw him down my friend. Logen Ninefingers! King of the Northmen!’ He beamed, holding out his hand. ‘It is fitting that we should stride into this bold new future as brothers.’

‘Aye,’ said Logen, pushing himself painfully up from his chair. ‘Right.’ He folded Jezal in a hug, slapped him on the back with a thump that echoed round the great chamber. ‘Reckon we’ll be staying our side of the Whiteflow from now on. Unless my brother has trouble down here, of course.’ He swept the sullen old men in the front row with a graveyard scowl. ‘Don’t make me fucking come back here.’ He sat down in the big chair and frowned out. The Bloody-Nine might not have known too much about politics, but he knew how to make a threat alright.

‘We won the war!’ Jezal rattled the golden hilt of his sword, then slid it smoothly back through the clasp on his belt. ‘Now we must win the peace!’

‘Well said, your Majesty, well said!’ The red-faced drunkard stood, not giving anyone the chance to get a word in. ‘Then only one order of business remains before the Open Council stands in recess.’ He turned with an oily smile and a hand-rubbing bow. ‘Let us offer our thanks to Lord Bayaz, the First of the Magi, who, by the wisdom of his council and the power of his Art, drove out the invader and saved the Union!’ He began to clap. The cripple Glokta joined him, then Duke Orso.

A burly lord in the front row sprang up. ‘Lord Bayaz!’ he roared, smashing his fat hands together. Soon the whole hall was resounding with reluctant applause. Even Heugen joined in. Even Isher, although he had a look on his face as if he was clapping at his own burial. Logen let his hands stay where they were. If he was honest, he felt a touch sick even being there. Sick and angry. He slumped back in his chair, and kept on frowning.

Terez and her father, the Grand Duke Orso, were engaged in what appeared to be a heartfelt argument, carried out in expressive Styrian, accentuated on both sides by violent hand movements. Jezal might have been relieved that he was not the only family member she appeared to despise, had he not suspected that he was the subject of their argument. He heard a soft scraping behind him, and was mildly disgusted to see the twisted face of his new Arch Lector.

‘Your Majesty.’ Glokta spoke softly, as if he planned to discuss secrets, frowning towards Terez and her father. ‘Might I ask . . . is all well between you and the queen?’ His voice dropped even lower. ‘I understand that you rarely sleep in the same room.’

Jezal was on the point of giving the cripple a backhanded blow across the face for his impudence. Then he caught Terez looking at him, out of the corner of his eye. That look of utter contempt that was his usual treatment as a husband. He felt his shoulders sag. ‘She can scarcely stand to be in the same country as me, let alone the same bed. The woman’s an utter bitch!’ he snarled, then hung his head and stared down at the floor. ‘What am I to do?’

Glokta worked his neck to one side, then the other, and Jezal suppressed a shudder as he heard a loud click. ‘Let me speak to the queen, your Majesty. I can be quite persuasive when I have the mind. I understand your difficulties. I am myself but recently married.’

Jezal dreaded to think what manner of monster might have accepted this monster as a husband. ‘Truly?’ he asked, feigning interest. ‘Who is the lady?’

‘I believe that the two of you are distantly acquainted. Ardee is her name. Ardee dan Glokta.’ And the cripple’s lips slid back to display the sickening hole in his front teeth.

‘But not—’

‘My old friend Collem West’s sister, yes.’ Jezal stared, speechless. Glokta gave a stiff bow. ‘I accept your congratulations.’ He turned away, limped to the edge of the platform, and began to lurch down the steps, leaning heavily on his cane.

Jezal could hardly contain his cold shock, his crushing disappointment, his utter horror. He could not conceive of what blackmail that shambling monstrosity might have employed to trap her. Perhaps she had simply been desperate when Jezal abandoned her. Perhaps, with her brother ill, she had been left with nowhere else to turn. Only the other morning, in the hospital, the sight of her had tugged at something in him, just the way it used to. He had been thinking to himself that perhaps, one day, with time . . .

Now even such pleasurable fancies were brought crashing to the ground. Ardee was married, and to a man that Jezal despised. A man who sat on his own Closed Council. To make matters even worse, a man to whom he had, in a moment of madness, just now confessed the total emptiness of his own marriage. He had made himself appear weak, vulnerable, absurd. He cursed bitterly under his breath.

It seemed now that he had loved Ardee with an unbearable passion. That they had shared something he would never find again. How could he not have realised it at the time? How could he have allowed it all to fall apart, for this? The sad fact was, he supposed, that love on its own was nothing like enough.

Nothing had worked out the way he’d hoped. He should’ve expected it by now, maybe. After all, things never had before. And yet he kept on pissing into the wind. He was like a man whose door’s too low, but instead of working out how to duck, keeps on smacking his head into the lintel every day of his miserable life. He wanted to feel sorry for himself, but he knew he deserved no better. A man can’t do the things he’d done, and hope for happy endings.

He strode out into the corridor and down the hallway, his jaw clenched. He shouldered open the next door without knocking. The tall windows stood open, sunlight pouring into the airy room, hangings stirring in the breeze. Bayaz sat in a carved chair in front of one of them, a teacup in his hand. A fawning servant in a velvet jacket was pouring into it from a silver pot, a tray and cups balanced on his outspread fingertips.

‘Ah, the King of the Northmen!’ called Bayaz. ‘How are—’

‘Where is Ferro?’

‘Gone. She left something of a mess behind, in fact, but I have tidied up, as I so often find myself—’

‘Where?’

The Magus shrugged. ‘South, I would imagine. Vengeance, or some such, if I was forced to guess. She always said a very great deal about vengeance. A most ill-tempered woman.’

‘She is changed.’

‘Great events, my friend. None of us are quite the same. Now, will you take tea?’

The servant pranced forward, silver tray bobbing. Logen seized him by his velvet jacket and flung him across the room. He squealed as he crashed into the wall and sprawled on the carpet, cups clattering around him.

Bayaz raised an eyebrow. ‘A simple “no” would have sufficed.’

‘Shit on that, you old bastard.’

The First of the Magi frowned. ‘Why, Master Ninefingers, you seem in bullish mood this morning. You are a king now, and it ill becomes you to let your baser passions rule you in this manner. Kings of that sort never last. You have enemies still in the North. Calder and Scale, up in the hills causing trouble, I am sure. Manners should be repaid by like manners, I have always thought. You have been helpful to me, and I can be helpful in return.’

‘As you were to Bethod?’

‘Just so.’

‘Much good it did him.’

‘When he had my help, he prospered. Then he became proud, and unruly, and demanded things all his own way. Without my help . . . well, you know the rest.’

‘Stay out of my business, wizard.’ Logen let his hand fall onto the hilt of the Maker’s blade. If swords have voices, as the Magus had once told him, he made it give a grim threat now.

But Bayaz’ face showed only the slightest trace of annoyance. ‘A lesser man might find himself upset. Did I not buy your life from Bethod? Did I not give you purpose when you had nothing? Did I not take you to the very edge of the World, show you wonders few men have seen? These are poor manners. Why, the very sword with which you threaten me was my gift to you. I had hoped we might come to a—’

‘No.’

‘I see. Not even—’

‘We are done. Looks as if I’ll never be a better man, but I can try not to be a worse. I can try that much, at least.’

Bayaz narrowed his eyes. ‘Well, Master Ninefingers, you surprise me to the last. I thought you a courageous yet restrained man, a calculating yet compassionate one. I thought you, above all, a realistic man. But the Northmen have ever been prone to petulance. I observe in you now an obstinate streak and a destructive temper. I see the Bloody-Nine at last.’

‘I’m happy to disappoint you. Seems we misjudged each other entirely. I took you for a great man. Now I realise my mistake.’ Logen slowly shook his head. ‘What have you done here?’

‘What have I done?’ Bayaz snorted with disbelieving laughter. ‘I combined three pure disciplines of magic, and I forged a new one! It seems you do not understand the achievement, Master Ninefingers, but I forgive you. I realise that book-learning has never been your strongest suit. Such a thing has not been contemplated since before the Old Time, when Euz split his gifts among his sons.’ Bayaz sighed. ‘None will appreciate my greatest achievement, it seems. None except Khalul, perhaps, and it is unlikely he will ever proffer his congratulations. Why, such power has not been released within the Circle of the World since . . . since . . .’

‘Glustrod destroyed himself and Aulcus with him?’

The Magus raised his eyebrows. ‘Since you mention it.’

‘And the results are pretty much the same, it seems to me, except you wrought a touch less careless slaughter, and ruined a smaller part of a smaller city, in a smaller, meaner time. Otherwise what’s the difference, between you and him?’

‘I would have thought that was entirely obvious.’ Bayaz lifted his teacup, gazing mildly over the rim. ‘Glustrod lost.’

Logen stood there for a long while, thinking on that. Then he turned and stalked from the room, the servant cringing out of his way. Into the corridor, footsteps clapping from the gilded ceiling, Bethod’s heavy chain jingling round his shoulders like laughter in his ear.

He probably should’ve kept the ruthless old bastard on his side. Chances were that Logen would need his help, the way things were like to be in the North, once he got back. He probably should’ve sucked up that stinking piss he called tea and smiled as if it was honey. He probably should’ve laughed, and called Bayaz old friend, so he could come crawling to the Great Northern Library when things turned sour. That would have been the clever thing to do. That would have been the realistic thing. But it was just the way that Logen’s father had always said . . .

He’d never been that realistic.